[Tutor] Basic newbie questions

[Cobaugh.Harvey@epamail.epa.gov]

I am just into my first 4 hours of "teach yourself Python in 24 hours"
but please forgive my impatience.  I downloaded Python ver 2.2 onto my
my Micron PC, 166Mhz, 128MB RAM, Windows 95-SR1.  I also downloaded the
WIn32all package and then went onto the Valuts of Parnassus site to
retrieve some already written programs to see how they worked and how
they were coded.  Finally I'm to the point:   I get errors when I try to
execute these programs.  I do the following:

CD\
cd python22
python tracert.py

In this example, I tried running "tracert.py" and got the following
error msg:

Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "C:\PYTHON22\tracert.py", line 96, in ?
    compress()
  File "C:\PYTHON22\tracert.py", line 84, in compress
    d=cPickle.load(open(fn))
IOError: [Errno 2] No such file or directory: 'stats.dat'

I'm not concerned about the error so much as what I am missing in terms
of things I must specify to make a program work.  Should this program
have worked, is this one of those revision bugs,  or did I not do
something??

Last question:

Where can I read or see examples of doing File I/O??   Specifically, how
to designate a drive to read a file from and how to read the file(s).
I realize I have  along way to go but I can't get passed this tracert
program not working; mentally.
I'll appreciate any help.

Thanks,
Harvey